The outcome of what happens between Leon Draisaitl and the Edmonton Oilers this summer is franchise-defining and could have massive ripple effects that include Connor McDavid’s future.
So, here’s some unsolicited advice for the Oilers: Don’t trade your superstar center under almost any condition.
Draisaitl is entering the final season of his contract and will be eligible for an extension beginning Monday. The Oilers have long planned to offer him one and have felt optimistic that he’ll sign it.
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The ball will soon be in Draisaitl’s court. And if he doesn’t want to return, change could be afoot.
Colleague Chris Johnston reported Tuesday, citing multiple league sources familiar with the Oilers front office’s view of the situation, that the team isn’t inclined to let Draisaitl play out the last season of his deal. The Oilers don’t want to risk letting him walk to free agency next summer.
Given where they are in their contention arc, though, that thinking seems misguided.
Even if Draisaitl doesn’t extend, it would behoove the Oilers to keep him around for one more year. That would allow them to take another shot at the Stanley Cup while trying to convince him to re-sign before July 1, 2025.
It would be a gamble. They might lose him for nothing. Except you never lose a player for nothing in a salary-cap world. You gain the cap space — in this case, $8.5 million.
Trading Draisaitl is almost certainly a no-win situation for the Oilers. He has a 10-team trade list and, for all intents and purposes, controls where he’d play next. It’s like the Matthew Tkachuk situation from two years ago where Draisaitl can choose where he wants to go, because that team will want him to come with an extension before offering up prime assets in a trade.
But unless the Oilers are blown away by an offer that includes a promising or established player or two in his early 20s, they shouldn’t even consider moving him. They can’t afford to make a trade that doesn’t help them now. Not with an aging roster that’s still trying to win.
As the Oilers get set to make their financial pitch to Draisaitl, one thing is clear: It’s time for him to get paid.
No one will shed a tear for a guy who’s finishing off an eight-year, $68 million contract, but the reality is he was only a couple of seasons into that deal before it was a mega bargain for the team.
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Draisaitl has been one of the most productive offensive players since agreeing to that pact. He’s been a perennial 50-goal, 100-point threat — joining the former club three times and the latter five times. That’s with two shortened seasons because of the pandemic mixed in there, too. He even had a campaign in which he won the Hart and Art Ross trophies to go along with a Ted Lindsay Award.
His playoff work is even better. Draisaitl has been one of the most prolific scorers in league history despite not scoring in his last nine games on this Oilers run and recording just three assists in the Stanley Cup Final. He pushed through a high-ankle sprain in the playoffs two years ago and was playing hurt at times over the last two months, too.
Nitpick parts of his game if you must, but there’s no question he’s in the top tier of the NHL’s best players.
Draisaitl is 28 and turns 29 in October. By the time a new contract kicks in, he’ll be a couple of weeks shy of his 30th birthday. Logic dictates that another eight-year deal should be what Draisaitl is seeking. This could be his best and last chance to score a major payday.
Given the recent contracts signed by Nathan MacKinnon, David Pastrnak, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Elias Pettersson, Draisaitl will be looking at a minimum of $12.5 million on average and probably $13 million as the floor for his next cap hit.
That might scare some teams. It might even worry the Oilers as the organization shifts more toward analytics and valuing aging-curve data. That’s germane to the Draisaitl case because he isn’t likely to provide oodles of surplus value the way he has on his current contract. Instead, the likelihood is far greater that the end of the contract becomes a burden.
It’s not the end of the contract that should matter in this case, though. It’s only the first few years.
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Signing Draisaitl, cost be damned, gives the Oilers their best odds to win before their window possibly slams shut. And it only increases the chances of McDavid re-upping a year later.
Sure, by the time a long-term and lucrative contract to Draisaitl hits the books, it’ll just add to the list of 30-something Oilers with millions of dollars and multiple years left on their deals. That group — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman and Darnell Nurse — is bound to be on the verge of significant regression.
The Oilers signing Draisaitl is all about extending and, thus, maximizing their chances to get over the hump and claim that elusive championship.
Of course, there might not be a contract offer big enough to keep Draisaitl in Edmonton.
He could decide he simply wants to play in a different location, somewhere a little more low-key. From a hockey perspective, he could look at the Oilers’ aging roster, their weak prospect pool and limited draft capital and wonder if things have peaked — or are not far off. As much as he and McDavid are good friends, he could feel like it’s time to stop being the Sergei Fedorov to McDavid’s Steve Yzerman or the Evgeni Malkin to No. 97’s Sidney Crosby.
Only Draisaitl knows how he thinks about all that — and he might not even know yet given he’s just completed an arduous and all-consuming playoff run that came up just short.
But once Draisaitl comes to his decision, and if that decision is that he’d prefer to go elsewhere, the Oilers’ first instinct shouldn’t be to move him.
Given their roster situation and likely dealing from a position of weakness, they’re probably better off keeping him and taking another crack at the Stanley Cup — even if it’s their last true good shot.
(Photo: Dave Sandford / NHLI via Getty Images)